[quote name='bvharris']My comment was obviously tongue-in-cheek, but nothing forced Nintendo's hand into acting like they didn't give a crap about it for the past six months.
If NoA had just come out and said they planned to bring it over here, even if they didn't give a release date, instead of stringing people along a lot of those who went out and imported it/hacked their Wii would probably not have done so. They'd given every indication they had no intention of releasing it, so it wasn't just impatience which lead people to import.[/QUOTE]
Course, you assume up til now that they planned on releasing it in the US all along. Personally, I believe the statement at the time that they had no plans of releasing the game here, which doesn't eliminate the possibility of future plans. In situations like these, companies tend to be conservative about what they say in public to try to avoid backlash if things don't come out the way they plan.
So, what has changed? Was it the campaign by fans to get them to release it? Was it sales in Europe? Was it Gamestop stepping up to the plate to push for it? Was it a combination of the above? To be honest, we probably will never know.